In development
DUAT, an extraction RPG set in the Egyptian underworld
Everything off this deck belongs to the dark.
DUAT is a combat-first extraction RPG set in the Egyptian underworld. You crew the Barque of Ra, go ashore into worlds the river swallowed, and carry back what you can before the light leaves.
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The pitch
The river of night swallows worlds
The Duat is the Egyptian underworld, the river the sun crosses every night from death to rebirth. It has been swallowing worlds. When a world dies it does not end. It falls into the Duat and settles along the river as wreckage: a drowned kingdom, a jungle temple, a plague-taken town, a dwarf-hold gone dark. The dead of every one of them are still walking.
You are one of the dead. You crew the Barque of Ra, the solar temple-ship that sails the twelve hours of night, and the Barque is the one protected thing on the river. Everything off its deck belongs to the dark, and to Apep, the serpent that swallows the sun.
Ra can only sail forward if each Gate of the night opens, and a Gate opens to one thing: its gatekeeper’s true Name. The swallowed worlds fell onto the Gates and buried the Names in the wreckage. So the crew goes ashore, takes what the dead no longer need, and digs the Names back out of the ruin. Recover the Names, the ship sails on, the sun rises another hour. That is the work.
This is not a story about one person. It is a passage the whole crew is making, and the river does not care about you.
What you actually do
A run has four beats
Pick a Gate, go ashore, take what you can, get back to the ship. Everything else in DUAT hangs off that.
- Step 1
Muster on the Barque
The temple-ship is the one safe deck on the river. You keep your stash in the canopic jars, reforge and attune at the Altar, take a crew, and read the map. Nothing here is at risk, and nothing here makes you wait. You pick the Gate.
- Step 2
Go ashore
A Gate opens onto the wreck of a world the river swallowed: a drowned kingdom, a jungle temple, a dwarf-hold gone dark. You walk in carrying only your own kit. The dead of that world are still there, and so is everything they no longer need.
- Step 3
Take the Name
At the heart of every world something is guarding a Gate's true Name. Beat it and the Name is yours, which sails the Barque an hour deeper into the night. You also take the god's power, and from then on you can attune weapons to it and carry its magic.
- Step 4
Get out before the light does
The Barque sails whether you are aboard or not. The light of Ra pulls back across the world, the ground behind it belongs to Apep, and the skiffs home wink out one at a time. The last skiff is wherever the ship has reached. Overstaying is not a mob killing you. It is the serpent.
The core mechanic
Everything you pick up makes the walk home worse
Loot does not go in a bag. It binds to your heart as weight, and picking something up never fails for lack of space. It only makes you heavier, which makes you slower and easier to read. Risk is the limiter here, not inventory tetris.
Then the rule that gives the whole game its spine: you keep the kit you walked in with, and you lose everything you found. There is no partial credit and no banking. Your heart meter shows what you are carrying against what you can carry, with a feather marking the weight you entered at. Everything past that feather is this run’s haul, and this run’s haul is exactly what a death costs.
So the question stops being “can I hold more?” and becomes “is it time to leave?” You ask it on every pickup, and a run is a hundred of them.
Being picked up matters more than anything else a crewmate can do for you. The weighing fires when you release, not when you fall, so a revive saves the entire run.
Two modes, one world
You are never made to fight other players
Every Gate runs in two modes, and they are the same world: same ground, same art, same level design, loaded with a different ruleset. A PvE instance never places a rival crew, and the dead are the only thing that wants your heart. A PvPvEinstance puts other crews ashore with you, and they are not bound by the dead’s patience.
Both modes drop the same loot at the same rates. PvP does not pay better spawns, and it never has. Every Name, every build, and every tier is reachable at full speed in PvE, and no player can gate another out of anything, because Names are personal and beating a Guardian never takes one off someone else’s map.
What PvPvE actually pays is other crews. Kill a loaded player and their heart falls where they died, marked for your crew alone, and you claim the most valuable half of it. The dark takes the rest. Nobody launders loot to a friend either, because crewmates cannot damage each other at all.
Camping the exit does not work, and that is structural rather than a rule in a code of conduct. The skiffs home are scattered and they are closing, so the exit a camper is sitting on gets taken away by the dark. Kills near one broadcast a radius on everyone’s map. A world holds three crews, sixteen players at the outside, so a map has to bring you together on purpose.
Progression
You get stronger by beating gods
Four sources, each doing one job. You level, and levels buy attributes. Each weapon levels separately by using it, and that buys nodes on its own tree. Both are banked: they are never weighed and never lost when you fall.
The third one is the reason to go down there. Beat a world’s Guardian and you take its Name and its power. The Name sails the Barque deeper. The power lets you attune your weapons to that god and carry its magic. Beat Anubis and you sail an hour further into the night carrying death-magic, and both of those came from the same fight.
The fourth is gear, and gear comes from drops. There is no crafting bench to grind. You salvage, socket, and reforge at the Altar, which puts the weight on the world: a Gate has to disgorge loot worth the trip, every trip.
The Names are the climb, and they are a lattice rather than a chain. Beat some of a tier’s Guardians to open the next one, not all of them and not in a fixed order, so there is no wall you have to grind one run against.
The arena
In the arena you have already been weighed
From the deck of the Barque you queue for ranked 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3. You bring no heart, because there is nothing to lose in here. Gear is normalized to a standard, every weapon tree is fully open, and nobody’s months of accumulation follow them in.
The arena shares the combat engine with the world and shares none of its power. That wall is written into the code rather than into a policy document: the ranked path cannot so much as name a PvE power type, so breaking it does not compile, and a test suite scans both surfaces to prove its own teeth.
Playing one side unlocks cosmetics and status on the other. It never unlocks power. The ladder measures one thing.
Straight answers
Asked, and answered
- Do I have to play against other people?
- No, and this one is a design law rather than a promise. Every Gate has a PvE instance that never places a rival crew, and both modes drop the same loot at the same rates. Every Name and every build is reachable at full speed without ever meeting another player. PvP is a choice you make for the upside of taking other crews' hearts, never a toll on your progress.
- What do I actually lose when I die?
- Everything you found on that run, from the first pickup. You keep the kit you walked in with, always. That is the whole rule, and it is one sentence on purpose: the old version banked part of your haul based on the order you happened to pick things up, which is impossible to explain at the moment it matters.
- Can I play alone?
- Yes. Queue on your own and you host your own instance and go. Population never gates entry, no world refuses you for lack of a crowd, and there are no dailies, no login streaks, and nothing that punishes you for being away for a month.
- Is the ranked arena gear-gated?
- No. In the arena your gear is normalized to a standard and nobody's accumulation carries over, so skill is the only variable. This is enforced in the code rather than by policy: the ranked power resolver cannot name a PvE power type, so a violation fails to compile.
- Is there crafting?
- No. Gear comes from drops. You salvage, socket, and reforge at the Altar on the Barque, and the world has to be worth the trip on its own, every trip.
- Is any of this pay-to-win?
- No. No pay-to-win, no grind-to-win in ranked, and no real-money loot boxes or gambling. Playing one side of the game unlocks cosmetics and status on the other, never power.
- Who's making this?
- One developer with a lifelong thing about ancient Egypt. Development is documented openly, misses included, and the game will be playable before it is finished.
The ship sails whether you're aboard or not
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